How to Spell Quagmire

by
Mina Hamilton

Dissident Voice

April
11, 2003

Bush
& Co crow over the "fall" of Baghdad.TV anchors and pundits trumpet the glorious victory.American troops are cheered.

Indeed,
many Iraqis are celebrating the downfall of a brutal dictator.There's, however, a big red light flashing:
Almost every thumbs-up quote from a "jubilant" Iraqi follows with a
comment opposing a long US occupation. "America short-term, okay.America long-term, bad." (1)

The
message is clear: A brutal dictatorship must not be replaced with US
colonialism.

Another
warning signal:Lawlessness and chaos
spread with massive looting.Even
hospitals are attacked by armed thugs.

Coming
next?The US/UK installs some form of
government.It might be a military
regime headed by an unknown general.It
might be a regime headed by the wealthy, MIT graduate, Ahmad Chalabi, an Iraqi
who hasn't set foot in Iraq for 45 years!Who knows what "leader" the Bushies have in mind, but
"jubilance" could segue into warring factions in a matter of weeks or
months.

It's
not hard to imagine a quagmire.Revenge
killings and guerrilla warfare ensues.Suicide bombings escalate.Despite American military might, the US/UK can't pacify the country and,
because of the oil, can't get out.

The
pro-war pundits repeatedly reassure us it's not Vietnam.Indeed Iraq seems potentially much worse
than Vietnam, particularly given the factor of the Kurds, the Turks, the
Shi'is, and the Sunnis.All are likely
soon to be at each other's throats and in the middle are US/UK occupying troops
trying to maintain some semblance of peace.

Despite
the differences between Iraq and Vietnam, the latter has some powerful lessons
that it's useful to remember.A
spelling game is in order.

Q
is for quisling.A term coined during
the 1940 Nazi occupation of Norway, a quisling collaborates with the country's
invaders, forming a puppet government.

US
foreign policy has long favored quislings.The most notorious being unpopular leaders we installed decades ago in
Vietnam.

In
1954 the US chose Ngo Dinh Diem, an autocratic Catholic to head South Vietnam, home
of a predominantly Buddhist and peasant population.

Diem's
first action on becoming President?He
hunted down and killed Vietnamese who, for years, had fought a war of
liberation against French colonialists.Diem instantly won the enmity of the populace.Nine years and hundreds of thousands of deaths later the US
realized it was backing a dead horse. (2)

Fast-forward
forty years.Meet Jay Garner, (fresh
from his stint with a defense contractor) and his band of ex-CIA and ex-Voice
of America honchos.This is a
Wolfowitz-selected, Pentagon-directed gang.

Democracy?Are you kidding?Wolfowitz's friends will nix a true democracy, since that would
give Iraqis control of their own oil.Enter Iraqi quislings, 2003-style.

Presto:
A set-up for a long, drawn-out fight with Iraqi nationalists determined to
wrest the government away from US puppets.

U
is for underfed.Americans were hated
in Vietnam.One reason?We destroyed the source of food.We bombed rice fields.We shot water buffaloes.We defoliated what was once a lavish, rich
land.

The
peasants began to starve.They were
herded into concentration camps or headed off to beg in Saigon.

In
Iraq starvation is already placing millions at risk. The UN says over 60% of
the population, almost 14 million, are dependent upon food rations.The war has stopped the distribution of
rations.

Water
supplies are in jeopardy.Hospitals, in
particular, are at risk.As the future
US/UK-installed government struggles to impose its authority, these shortages
are likely to remain a problem.

Iraqis
don't like starving any more than the Vietnamese did.Neither will the Iraqis enjoy dying of thirst or seeing their
children die of diarrhea, caused by drinking polluted water.

A
is for air strikes.Aerial warfare
inspires hatred.Americans saw this in
our unified response of outrage to the Al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade
Center.The carpet-bombing of B-52's
over North and South Vietnam resulted in a fierce determination by the bombed
peoples to fight back.

Already
the Iraqi people are livid over the deaths and maiming caused by non-precise,
US bombing.Listen to the 26-year-old
whose leg was amputated after a missile hit his car, "Why would the
Americans do this to me? We Iraqis will never accept that this country is ruled
by anybody but Iraqis, so we will fight to the last drop of our blood." (3)

When
word gets out about horrendous attacks on children, such as that seen in the
Hilla hospital by Red Cross doctors, including small toddlers missing arms and
legs and truckloads of dismembered bodies, Iraqi hatred will deepen. (4)

Add
a civil war to the mix and the outlook isn't pretty.

G
is for genocide.When ordinary citizens
oppose an invading army, the result can be genocide:to "win" an entire nation has to be destroyed.

In
Vietnam, Americans were clueless as to who was Charlie or the VC.Reporter Jonathan Schell watched US military
patrols kill peasants.He would ask,
How did you know that was Charlie?The
answers: "They had on black pajamas." "They were running."
"They keep looking up at planes flying overhead." "They tried to
hide under the trees."And my
favorite, "he walked real proud, instead of shuffling along like a
farmer." (5)

Conveniently
forgotten?All peasants in Vietnam wore
black pajamas.A people under
bombardment usually try to hide.They
often anxiously look up at planes.

Genocide
has not occurred in Iraq, but the blood of many innocent civilians has been
spilled.Within days of the beginning
of the war, American soldiers were complaining they couldn't identify
"unfriendlies."An article
in the Guardian on April 1 reported a soldier saying, "How do we know who
the enemy is?" (6)

As
resistance builds to an American occupation, the identity of the enemy is
likely to become more confused - and US/UK moral compunctions about killing
civilians will dwindle.

M
is for manipulation of the media.When
the media becomes a propaganda machine for the military, people start believing
nonsense.Nonsense feeds quagmires.

During
the Vietnam War, the media dutifully reported how we were
"winning."All we needed was
just a few more bombing raids, just a few more troops…

In
Week Three, the establishment media rolls out the superlatives to describe
victory in Baghdad.

The
TV anchors don't mention that the Pentagon says 100,000 American troops will be
needed to police postwar Iraq or that General Shinseki, the Army Chief of
Staff, wants even more for this task: several hundred thousand . . .

The
Talking Heads don't refer to Wolfowitz who says the occupation will last, at
least, six months…

I
is for intransigence.Eventually, it
became clear that the Vietnam War was unwinnable.But Johnson, Nixon, Kissinger and others who plunged the US into
the morass - and who caused the death of 58,000 GI's and two million Vietnamese
-- were unwilling to admit error.Long
after the writing was on the wall, the conflict went on.This happened in Vietnam.

It
could easily happen in Iraq with an occupation extending for decades into the
future.

R
is for racism.Soldiers kill best when
they're racists.In Vietnam, the enemy became
Dinks and Gooks.

Although
discrimination against Arabs has been a feature of US society for years, watch
the anti-Arab racism increase once the days of "jubilation" are over
and revenge killing and guerrilla warfare begins.

One
nasty result of racial stereotyping?"They" don't experience human emotions, like love.

In
Vietnam, the US was astonished because the Vietnamese fought back.Waves upon waves of Vietcong soldiers were
wiped out.Then more appeared.The US explanation?The Vietnamese thought life was cheap.They were willing to die.Left out of the picture was the Vietnamese's
close family structure.They hated
seeing loved-ones murdered.

During
the first weeks of the Iraq war, TV anchors, the US military brass and US
ground troops kept wagging their heads and asking, Huh, why are the Iraqis
fighting?It must be because Saddam is
threatening their families.

Left
out of the equation: Iraqis love their families.Why would the parents of sons slaughtered in the current invasion
not fight back?Why would the father of
a dying 5-year-old -- dying because US-led sanctions stopped medical supplies
from reaching Iraq -- like the invader?Why would relatives of victims riddled with shrapnel cheer the US?

Once
it becomes clear that the US/UK forces aren't leaving soon and/or have picked
an unpopular quisling to govern, the Iraqis will demonstrate other normal human
emotions, like anger and hate.

E
is for empire.Always, without fail,
empires topple.They crumble.Why?People hate being occupied by foreigners.The Roman Empire fell, the Persian Empire fell, the Russian
Empire fell. The American Empire will also fall.Until it does, untold suffering will result.

Quagmire.There's only one cure.No occupation of Iraq.Bring home the troops.Leave Iraqi oil to the Iraqis.Let a neutral, third force rebuild this
devastated land.

Mina Hamilton is a writer
living in New York City.She can be
reached at minaham@aol.com.